1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to services provided through a guide of audio, video, multimedia transmission, receiving and playback system with advertising and bi-directional fulfillment of goods and services over the Internet. More specifically, to a system in which users select specific audio, video, and multimedia content from a plurality of Internet sources, receiving such content at the user's location using an Internet connect device where advertising targeted at the user is placed before, during, and/or after the content is played/run and with the user having the option of purchasing goods and services as a result of the advertising through the same Internet connect devices at the convenience of the user.
2. Discussion of Related Technology
Traditional content such as radio and television broadcasts have been predicated on a physical antenna located in a specific geography. Generally, this limited access of broadcast content to consumers within a specific geography enabling advertisements to be targeted at those within the broadcast range of the antenna. Furthermore, it limited the number of broadcasters in any geography to those with sufficient capital to build the physical infrastructure. In developed countries such as the United States, sophisticated statistical demographic analysis as well as polling customers in various regions of the country has been developed by companies such as Arbitron to determine what, who, and how long customers watch or listen to a broadcast. This is ultimately used to determine how much a broadcaster can charge an advertiser to present goods and services to the broadcaster's customers. Furthermore, the advertisement is generally uni-directional—that is, a broadcast advertisement message requires that an interested customer use an alternate method (e.g., travel to a store, make a telephone call to a product/services fulfillment house, send mail to a fulfillment house, etc.) to obtain the advertised goods and/or services.
Presently, with the tremendous capabilities of the Internet as a method to distribute content and as a source of customers, broadcasters and other producers of audio, video, and multimedia content have begun to make their content available to users of the Internet. Using the Internet for content distribution is very different from traditional broadcasting with respect to capital investment and geographic reach. For example, while traditional broadcasters require substantial up-front capital to build the necessary infrastructure to reach a local audience, once the infrastructure is in place, the cost of incremental customer use of the infrastructure is virtually zero. With the Internet, this is not the case. While it is relatively inexpensive to build the infrastructure to deliver content via the Internet, costs are associated with incremental customer use of the content, i.e., each individual user of an Internet stream requires incremental bandwidth and other computer/network resources. With respect to geographic reach, the Internet is without boundaries, extending the availability of the content globally. With the Internet, listening, watching, or working with content originating in Los Angeles is as easily accomplished by a customer in New York or Paris as one in Los Angeles.
The ease of establishing a presence on the Internet with the promise of a large numbers of customers has led to hundreds of thousands of streaming content providers today. Internet content providers vary from traditional broadcasters with professionally produced content to individuals producing unique amateur content. The Internet further enables ever more sophisticated methods for user interaction with content, a direct means to collect information about the user, and a means to conduct instantaneous transactions for goods and services by users.
The explosion in content streams available on the Internet and the global nature of Internet access to content have led to fundamental problems of 1) how customers find content of interest and 2) how can advertisement be effectively run with users in multiple geographies. In the United States alone, traditional radio stations making their broadcast streams available on the Internet today number in the tens of thousands, making regional call letters for stations almost obsolete and local advertisements ineffective for Internet listeners outside of the original broadcast geography.